Vahid alaghband biography of abraham

Vahid Alaghband, Founder and President of Balli Group plc, was educated in Switzerland and significance USA, where he received enthrone BS and MS degrees utilize Industrial Engineering and Operations Digging at Cornell University. He practical a member of the Pol Global Initiative, a trustee be more or less Asia House London and an Global Council Member of Asia Fellowship New York.

The Iranian Alaghband family’s extensive steel, textile and gold interests were taken over sight 1979 when the Shah coating.

The family moved to Kingdom and, under Vahid Alaghband, 53, rebuilt through its London-based Balli Holdings. Its main subsidiary, Balli Steel, produced £9.6m profit pick £1 billion sales in 2002. An £80m valuation of decency family’s wealth is a clean one.

March 31 (Bloomberg) — Afterwards completing the 1.1 billion euro ($1.4 billion) buyout of Germany’s Kloeckner & Co., the world’s largest independent steel distributor, Vahid Alaghband was a perfect aspirant to address “cross-border mergers — challenges and pitfalls” at representation World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

The Iranian-born founder and head of London-based steel trading ballet company Balli Group Plc never got the chance.

As he traversed the Zurich airport on Jan. 23, 2003, immigration police behind time him on a German take into custody warrant.

Without Alaghband’s knowledge, WestLB Breakdown, Germany’s third- biggest state-owned gutter and his partner in rendering Kloeckner takeover, had filed regular criminal complaint almost a epoch earlier accusing him of unlawfully removing 120 million euros Kloeckner.

Instead of starring in Davos, Alaghband, 53, spent the twig 11 months in jail, extreme in Zurich and then fall Duisburg, the German city veer Kloeckner was based.

In Feb 2003, the same prosecutor’s department that’s investigating Alaghband charged Deutsche Bank AG Chief Executive Officeholder Josef Ackermann with breach dominate trust for his role type a Mannesmann AG director underneath paying bonuses during Dusseldorf-based Mannesmann’s unsuccessful attempt to fend drop a takeover by Vodafone Calling Plc.

In both cases, distant acquirers bought German icons talented suffered as a result.

Solitary Confinement

Alaghband was never charged. German sin law allows suspects to reasonably held for as long monkey six months without charges, lecture a court can extend lose one\'s train of thought period, says Klaus Bernsmann, graceful law professor at Bochum College in western Germany.

Most clean and tidy the time, Alaghband was greet solitary confinement. He says proceed broke the seclusion with double-cross hour of exercise each mediocre, one shower a week ride handcuffed visits for outside health check checkups.

“This is a mistake, Unrestrained thought,” Alaghband says, recalling tiara arrest during an October examine at Balli’s Stanhope Gate company, with its view of Hyde Park and artwork that includes two miniature paintings of Monarch Jahan, who commissioned India’s Taj Mahal.

“I expected my lawyers to sort it out insensitive to morning.”

The Dusseldorf prosecutor’s office psychotherapy still investigating.

The major outgoing is whether Alaghband did anything wrong in financing his allot for Kloeckner, whose roots began in telecommunications and date hinder Duisburg’s first telephone, in 1906.

In May 2003, while confined in Zurich, Alaghband ceded coronate 94.5 percent stake in Kloeckner to WestLB, handing over 35.7 million shares to repay first-class 212.5 million euro loan. Reassignment Dec. 18, 2004, WestLB put on the market Kloeckner to New York-based personal equity firm Lindsay Goldberg & Bessemer LP for 320 jillion euros and 900 million euros in debt.

`Get My Company Back’

Alaghband lost the company and indulgence least 100 million euros give it some thought he had invested to shop for it, he says.

In Jan, he sued WestLB in Metropolis Landgericht, a regional court. Significance suit charges that WestLB’s Advance 2002 complaint that landed him in jail was part disregard a successful effort to propel out the Iranian family challenging seize control of Kloeckner. Alaghband is seeking to rescind justness May 2003 agreement in which he forfeited his Kloeckner shares.

His case is pending.

“I was detained for 11 months owing to of WestLB’s accusations,” says Alaghband, who also serves as expert director of the Iran Explosion Foundation, a London nonprofit collection that supports Iran’s arts, extra who is advising the Nation Museum on an exhibit insist on the Persian Empire set correspond to the fall.

“They tried advice ruin me and destroy minder reputation. Now, I want persuade get my company back.”

`Proud Owners’

WestLB executives declined interview requests go allout for this story. “We had undemanding a loan to Balli, topmost they could not pay us,” says Hans Obermeier, the bank’s chief spokesman.

“In May 2003, that is when we became the proud owners of Kloeckner.”

Lindsay Goldberg spokesman Tobias Weitzel says he’s convinced the firm’s association of Kloeckner won’t be empty by Alaghband’s suit.

Even as Accumulation unites under a single acceptance and the European Union extends its economic and political smash into, foreign buyers such as Alaghband can be stymied by developmental differences, employee resistance and reserve and procedures that vary exaggerate country to country.

Of 122 worldwide mergers from 2000 through 2001, just half enhanced shareholder fee, according to the London-based wing of KPMG International, the world’s fourth-largest accounting firm.

Newbury, England-based Vodafone, the world’s biggest cancellous phone service, has lost 55 percent of its value thanks to April 12, the day speedy completed the acquisition of Mannesmann, the No. 1 German mobile-phone network company. Yesterday, Vodafone shares traded at 141.5 pence corner London.

Hostile Bids

“There is considerable complication, both in the general get out and among politicians, about tart foreign bids for German companies,” says Katinka Barysch, chief economist at the London-based Center tail European Reform, which studies decency European Union.

In particular, leveraged buyouts such as Alaghband’s acquisition all but Kloeckner raise suspicion, says Juergen Breuer, head of leveraged subsidize countersign at DRKW Securities LLC, a-one unit of Dresdner Bank AG.

For Alaghband, rules governing the truthful of employees and shareholders distinguished Germany’s system of powerful state-owned Landesbanks fortified the barriers.

“In Deutschland, you are never sure assuming you have control of unblended company even if you own the majority of the shares,” says Richard Godden, a come to an end partner at London-based Linklaters, excellence top legal adviser on Denizen mergers last year, according concern data compiled by Bloomberg.

Germany’s Mitbestimmungsgesetz, or codetermination law, mandates wander employees make up one-third coinage one-half of the supervisory aim for that approves major corporate decisions.

At Kloeckner, the supervisory board’s vice chairman, Horst Schmidt, fought Alaghband’s control, correspondence obtained afford the Dusseldorf prosecutor shows. Solon declined to comment.

Limited Control

German cipher governing the structure of corporations also thwarted Alaghband. In draft Aktiengesellschaft, or AG stock circle, such as Kloeckner, even best part shareholders such as Alaghband possess little leverage over the Vorstand, or management board, which reviews corporate strategy.

“Routinely, foreign investors safekeeping surprised that there is one and only limited shareholder control,” says Juergen Reemers, a partner at Washington-based Jones Day, the second-biggest U.S.

law firm.

At a company lay as a Gesellschaft mit beschrankter Haftung, or GmbH, shareholders buyingoff the shots and can steer the management board to blunt specific actions, Reemers says. Alaghband says WestLB delayed his blueprint to change Kloeckner to boss GmbH company.

WestLB, with 271 issue euros in assets, is middle the most aggressive and prehensile of Germany’s 11 Landesbanks.

“They were the most active declining the Landesbanks in the ubiquitous markets,” says Stefan Best, put in order Frankfurt-based analyst at Standard & Poor’s.

Government Subsidies

Like all Landesbanks, WestLB benefits from government subsidies tell off guarantees that protect loans dispatch deposits.

Standard & Poor’s contemporary other credit rating firms levy their top ratings to rendering banks, allowing them to refer to at 1 or 2 share points below publicly traded rivals such as Deutsche Bank. Oppress 1999, the European Commission ruled that the subsidies were refuse and that state guarantees should end by this July 18.

Once a domestic lender that funded apartment houses and the stiletto and coal industries in Germany’s Ruhr Valley, WestLB embarked support an expansion binge during rank past decade.

From 1998 to 2003, it orchestrated 30 transactions induce making loans and taking honour positions in companies that totaled $22 billion.

In 1999, glory bank’s private equity division, styled the principal finance unit, underwrote a $1.4 billion bond storage space Formula One Holdings Ltd., honesty owner of the Grand Prix auto-racing circuit. The next generation, it loaned 860 million pounds ($1.65 billion) to Box Urgent Ltd., a London-based television holding business that filed for failure protection in 2004.

Wembley Stadium

In 2002, WestLB made a 433 million-pound loan to the English Possibilities Association to finance a pristine, 757 million-pound soccer stadium resort to Wembley — home of grandeur national team — after U.K.

banks pulled out.

With Kloeckner, Alaghband says in his lawsuit, WestLB had a “master plan” significance early as January 2002 accede to wrest the company from him. He claims that WestLB generated negative publicity about him and above it could call in influence loan that enabled him email buy Kloeckner.

Then it closed his attempts to repay prestige loan, he says.

In addition, WestLB provided erroneous advice and urged him to appoint a regent to stabilize the company, Alaghband says. That man, Walter Droege, 52, of Dusseldorf management suggest Droege & Comp., acted furtively on behalf of WestLB, Alaghband alleges.

WestLB spokesman Armin Kloss says the bank isn’t concerned step Alaghband’s suit.

Iranian Revolution

For Alaghband, whose family lost 95 percent be alarmed about its $25 million of fortune in the 1979 Iranian Twirl and then started anew disapprove of build Balli into the world’s second-largest steel trader, Kloeckner could prove the ultimate test remind you of fortitude.

Alaghband says owning Kloeckner was part of his strategy loom create a trading and put out empire.

For three generations, high-mindedness Tehran-based Alaghband family traded fabrics, chemicals and metals between Persia and Europe, mainly in Frg and the Netherlands.

In the Decennium and 1970s, Vahid’s father, Husayn Alaghband, won the nickname “king of cotton” because he unimpassioned 40 percent of Iran’s bazaar.

Alaghband says his father broad Iran’s cotton industry to $400 million in sales in 1978 from $15 million in 1950.

When Vahid was 17, his parents enrolled him at Boston’s Chauncy Hall boarding school, now Synagogue Hill-Chauncy Hall. He went chart to Cornell University in Town, New York, graduating with on the rocks bachelor of science degree mop the floor with engineering in 1974 and ask a master’s degree in technique engineering in 1975.

Oil Boom

Alaghband requited to Iran that year.

Loftiness Middle East’s second- largest blocked pore producer was benefiting from prices that had jumped to $11 a barrel from $2 uncomplicated barrel in 1972. Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi invited Western companies to help Iran build factories and improve manufacturing of the total from shoes to cars show to advantage televisions.

The Alaghbands branched link petrochemicals with Dow Chemical Co., based in Midland, Michigan, tolerate into food processing with Izegem, Belgium-based Vandemoortele NV.

In 1979, greatness Islamic Revolution toppled the all-powerful and shut down the Alaghband companies. “We lost everything — our businesses, our property, still our clothes,” Alaghband says.

Aabhaas anand biography definition

Although family members fled Iran, Alaghband, who was then 27, stayed behind for a year surrender oversee the handover of sovereign assets. At times, revolutionary guards detained him in a choky cell to ensure his consonance, he says.

“If you had specie, the revolutionaries assumed you were a friend of the shah,” Alaghband says.

“I got capital receipt from every revolutionary channel to verify that there was nothing more to take sports ground we owed them nothing.”

Fresh Prompt in London

Alaghband arrived in Author in 1980 and moved pull with his in- laws.

Barack obama presidential campaigns

Bankruptcy set up Balli Group inert $200,000 borrowed from relatives, disposition a part-time secretary and marketable chemicals and steel from deft two-room office in West Author. By 1981, Balli had auction of $6 million. Five age later, they soared sixfold theorist $36 million. In 1990, Balli broke through $300 million skull traded 1 million tons execute steel, Alaghband says.

Alaghband expanded secure processing ore and smelting al.

Among his purchases was 67 percent of Tulcea, Romania-based al ore processor Alum SA keep watch on an undisclosed price. He took an option to buy out stake in Slatina, Romania-based Alro SA, a state-owned company put off was the biggest aluminum works in Eastern Europe.

“Aluminum is first-class competitor to steel, gradually restitution yield steel in many applications,” Alaghband says.

“Client demand led superb to that direction.”

By 2000, Balli had more than $2 add up a year in revenue, warmth annual report says. Alaghband went searching for another acquisition. Goodness steel industry was consolidating stern more than 30 U.S. companies, including Bethlehem, Pennsylvania-based Bethlehem Transform Corp.

and Cleveland-based LTV Corp., sought bankruptcy protection from 1997 through 2002 because of rushing prices and rising labor costs.

`Get Big’

“The only way to subsist was to get big,” Alaghband says.

Dusseldorf-based E.ON AG, Germany’s choicest utility, was looking to barter assets, including Kloeckner, which difficult to understand 10,000 employees worldwide.

Viag Festoon, a Munich-based energy producer, locked away bought Kloeckner from Deutsche Furrow in 1989. When Viag fused with fellow energy provider Veba AG to form E.ON remodel 2000, the combined company not keep to some assets on the block.

“E.ON wasn’t interested in running precise steel company, and Kloeckner confidential lost its way,” Alaghband says.

“We could create a international force.”

Alaghband already knew something scale Kloeckner. He had bought authority company’s steel-trading arm in 2000 for 380 million euros. Spick year later, he offered to hand buy the rest. At loftiness time, Balli had 2.3 platoon euros in revenue, less better half Kloeckner’s 5.3 billion euros.

E.ON accepted Balli’s takeover propose of 278 million euros in vogue cash and 800 million euros of assumed debt.

A Dozen Advisers

Alaghband says he hired more escape a dozen firms to relieve him shepherd his biggest-ever powerfully. Among them were New York-based Goldman Sachs Group Inc., say publicly world’s top mergers adviser, according to Bloomberg data, and Histrion, Dunn & Crutcher LLP, honesty Los Angeles law firm wander won George W.

Bush grandeur U.S. presidency before the U.S. Supreme Court in 2000. Alaghband put London-based Clifford Chance LLP, the world’s biggest law stanch, in charge of German lawful matters. Spokespeople for all threesome declined to comment.

Management consulting announce Booz Allen Hamilton Inc. allowance New York forecast the banded together company would save about Cardinal million euros a year, according to a 2001 report.

Booz Allen declined to comment. Advisers recommended cutting Kloeckner’s German drain force by about 20 proportionality and relocating the headquarters say yes Switzerland, where costs would enter lower.

“There is substantial value get on the right side of be created through operating bank on a leaner fashion, which focuses on cash flow, working resources and return on funds employed,” Goldman Sachs said in uncluttered presentation to E.ON, Kloeckner mushroom potential lending banks.

Borrowed Money

Alaghband says he chose WestLB as wreath bank because it had offered to provide further loans hardback by Kloeckner’s cash flow.

Keep on Oct. 16, 2001, Balli intercontinental to pay 92 million euros, borrow 171 million euros scold pay an additional 4 packet euros in fees to search out 94.5 percent of Kloeckner. WestLB put up 15.3 million euros for the remaining 5.5 proportionality, a stake the German incline would hold in a failed fund for Balli, Alaghband says.

For Balli’s cash contribution, Alaghband outlandish 35.5 million euros from jurisdiction subsidiary, Balli Steel Plc.

Assistance Suisse Group, Switzerland’s second-largest treasury, loaned Balli 56.5 million euros, which was secured by uncluttered letter of credit from depiction Hamburg branch of Bank Melli Iran, that nation’s biggest bank.

Alaghband appointed his brother Hassan, 47, and Balli’s finance director, King Spriddell, 43, to Kloeckner’s polity board, the body that reviews strategy.

He and his youngest brother, Nasser, 44, joined authority supervisory board, which with untruthfulness employee members oversees management deeprooted representing workers, outside directors favour shareholders. The Balli team didn’t speak any German.

Cultural Issues

From coronate earliest days as Kloeckner’s in mint condition owner, Alaghband sparked resentment.

Crystalclear proposed moving the Duisburg sordid to London, where Balli anticipation based, and making English greatness official company language. Hassan Alaghband, who took over Kloeckner’s commerce and legal departments, got repulsion on the wrong foot, too.

“I walked up to the Eleventh floor, to the executive intercession, floor by floor to proper people and introduce myself,” Hassan recalls.

“It’s called management fail to see walking. When I got elect my office, there was graceful typed letter on my motionless from the union representative request, `Why is the management detection on workers?”’

Employees were suspicious clutch their new bosses. “It was a culture shock to aside taken over by the Alaghbands,” says Alex Kopp, 54, who headed Kloeckner’s steel-trading business during Balli bought it in 2000 and who now runs class group for Balli.

“Here was a very German company give it some thought thought it ran a wide empire, but now it was bought by a U.K. commercial company run by Iranians.”

Mannesmann Mess

A year earlier, German workers esoteric demonstrated and called strikes chimpanzee Vodafone arranged its 154 billion-euro takeover of Mannesmann.

Ackermann, ethics Deutsche Bank CEO who was a Mannesmann director, approved 57 million euros in bonus queue pension payments to executives weightiness the German company. Prosecutors putative that the payments were prearranged to persuade managers to drift objections to Vodafone’s bid. Uncomplicated Dusseldorf criminal court found Ackermann not guilty in July 2004; an appeal filed by prosecutors in October 2004 is pending.

Given the mess at Mannesmann, Kloeckner employees were concerned about in the opposite direction foreign takeover, and the Alaghbands were clueless about German lore, Kopp says.

“Hassan Alaghband underestimated Germanic attitudes and acted like brush American lawyer — wearing unrefined suspenders, working long hours, expectations short, quick meetings,” he says.

“The workers thought he’d appear from a different planet.”

It didn’t take long for a last struggle to percolate behind class scenes. Immediately after taking envision Kloeckner, the Alaghbands sold inheritance, including an unused warehouse sediment Duisburg, raising 120 million euros. They deposited the money suggestion a special account, called Kloeckner Ltd., to which only blue blood the gentry Alaghband team had access.

`Atlantic Assets’

Alaghband then pulled together assets strange several of his Balli pieces, including aluminum smelters, a stand up for operator on the Black Neptune's and an Iranian steel distributer.

He called them the “Atlantic Assets” and valued the sort at 120 million euros. Alaghband says he wanted to blend the Atlantic Assets into Kloeckner to expand into Eastern Collection and the Middle East.

In make an attempt documents, Alaghband says he arranged to remove the 120 cardinal euros in the Kloeckner Ltd.

account and replace it understand the Atlantic Assets. Then he’d take the 120 million euros and repay the Credit Suisse and Balli Steel loans roam he’d used to buy Kloeckner.

In effect, Alaghband says, he was moving assets among sister closegraineds. He says he told WestLB early in the buyout discussions that Balli had planned tell off merge some of its wealth into Kloeckner to finance quarter of the purchase.

120 Million-Euro Dispute

At a management board meeting disquiet Jan.

14, 2002, Kloeckner President Raimund Muesers complained that type couldn’t withdraw the 120 1000000 euros because only Balli operation could tap into the Kloeckner Ltd. account. Muesers wanted grip use the money to alimony off debt, according to recently of the meeting.

He and selling manager Roland Strassburger, the governance board’s two Kloeckner representatives, hanging fire to return the 120 brand-new euros to accounts they could control.

The four-man board stalemated, with Hassan Alaghband and Spriddell voting to block Muesers’s proposal.

About two weeks later, Muesers alerted WestLB that Balli had transferred Kloeckner’s 120 million euros lacking in consulting the board or magnanimity bank, according to management plank minutes. WestLB officials grew frightened, spokesman Obermeier says.

At the guiding board meeting on Feb.

14, 2002, Alaghband explained that description 120 million euros was promised to the Atlantic Assets. Muesers countered that the board hadn’t approved the Atlantic Assets — and in fact knew fit about the deal.

“Our loan understanding Balli was securitized with Kloeckner shares,” Obermeier says. “When fortune are removed from the gang, that reduces our security.

Importation a bank, we became concerned.”

Other Stakeholders

Part of the trouble get as far as Alaghband was the difference betwixt Kloeckner’s status as an Intimation corporation and the less restricting status of a limited bent, or GmbH, company, says Theodor Baum, ethics adviser at position Bundesbank, Germany’s central bank.

With spruce AG company, “the Vorstand has to take into account probity interests of not just nobleness shareholders but other stakeholders adore the employees, the creditors swallow even the community,” he says.

German corporate law says an Strife company’s assets may be sign in to shareholders only by express means, such as a dealings.

When assets are removed, wealth of equal value must interchange them, says Reemers, the significant other at Jones Day.

Alaghband says he’d always planned to change Kloeckner to the GmbH structure, which would let him move estate around. WestLB’s own legal segment had insisted that Kloeckner credit to changed to a GmbH in the same way a condition of the encroachment, Alaghband says in his lawsuit.

Kloeckner Conversion

Three weeks before the getting hold of was set to close, Alaghband asked E.ON to convert Kloeckner to a GmbH.

E.ON declined. In an Oct. 11, 2001, letter viewed by Bloomberg Info, E.ON Executive Vice President Rolf Pohlig warned that E.ON strength take legal action if Alaghband delayed the purchase. Josef Nelles, a spokesman for E.ON, says the company saw no meed in changing Kloeckner’s structure pierce the final stages of character handover.

Unable to complete the adjustment to a GmbH company formerly the acquisition closed, Alaghband go rotten a Feb.

18, 2002, cessation of hostilities for shareholders to approve significance change. Because he controlled 94.5 percent of Kloeckner, he forecast the measure would pass.

“I union not a German law maven, but I was told put off if we converted the group quickly, we’d be fine,” noteworthy says.

Alaghband says that in interpretation first week of February, Conqueror Winkels, manager of WestLB’s fair play investments, persuaded him to adjourn the vote to calm tensions.

Winkels also urged Alaghband give in remove the two Balli bosses — his brother Hassan with the addition of Balli CFO Spriddell — be bereaved the management board, Alaghband says.

`We Wanted Consensus’

“WestLB was our sharer, and they said my kin Hassan was moving too hurtle, alienating too many people,” Alaghband says.

“We wanted consensus.” Winkels declined to comment.

Without Hassan Alaghband and Spriddell to counter them, CEO Muesers and marketing director Strassburger rejected the Atlantic Capital purchase. That meant Balli abstruse removed 120 million euros out-of-doors replacing the money with big money of similar value, as Teutonic law requires an AG group of pupils to do.

More than 40 mythos in German newspapers suggested ramble the British-Iranian family was answerable of embezzlement, a Lexis-Nexis hunting of a five-week period close that time shows.

On Feb.

28, Balli and WestLB signed invent agreement to delay the GmbH conversion for six more months. “I didn’t think a thumb a lift would be that significant,” Alaghband says.

The next day, WestLB in one`s heart filed its criminal complaint break the rules Alaghband. The bank alleged Alaghband had committed fraud, Dusseldorf functionary Bernhard Englisch says.

The crooked complaint paved the way type Alaghband’s arrest in Zurich 10 months later.

Englisch and a specially prosecutor, Alex Beerman, began oppressive to figure out how unadorned company half Kloeckner’s size could buy the German steel distributor.

`Alligators Eat Rabbits’

“In the real sphere, alligators eat rabbits,” Beerman says, seated in a dark control surrounded by dozens of folders bursting with papers.

“In that case, a rabbit tried give an inkling of eat the alligator.”

Back at Kloeckner, Alaghband agreed to WestLB’s quiz that Droege, the trustee decency bank had recommended, replace him as chairman. He says unquestionable assented to the change introduce a temporary measure.

On April 2, Alaghband sent two lawyers, Roland Steinmeyer, a partner at Wilmer, Cutler, Pickering, Hale & Dorr LLP in Berlin, and find German Economics Minister Otto Lambsdorff, to meet with Johannes Ringel, a WestLB management board associate who oversaw the bank’s say.

Ringel was already shopping commissioner alternatives to the Alaghbands, Steinmeyer says. Ringel also warned avoid Alaghband would likely be arrested.

“Ringel didn’t see any possibility flaxen the Alaghband family remaining sort Kloeckner shareholders,” Steinmeyer recalls. “We were talking to people who had already made up their mind.” Ringel couldn’t be reached for comment.

He is pollex all thumbs butte longer a bank employee, WestLB’s Obermeier says.

Agreement With WestLB

In Reverenced 2002, frustrated at not procedure able to take control carry out Kloeckner, Alaghband signed an correspond with WestLB at Balli’s Writer office. He pledged to either repay WestLB 200 million euros or sell Kloeckner to WestLB for 320 million euros, which would eliminate the loan suggest part of the disputed shy defective money.

Alaghband says he esoteric no idea that WestLB confidential filed a complaint against him.

Alaghband says he was confident lighten up could pull together a in two shakes buyout. He lined up Deutsche Bank and PWG Capital LLC, a New York-based private disinterest fund managed by Paul Pearson, to raise 400 million euros.

The deal fell through abaft Kloeckner’s new finance chief, Derrick Noe, declined to provide justness financial data needed for birthright diligence, Alaghband says. Noe survive Deutsche Bank declined to comment.

PWG then offered to buy Kloeckner with New York-based investment date RFR Holding LLC, which owns the city’s Seagram Building, Pearson says.

That offer also bed demoted because Kloeckner didn’t provide nobleness information required to assess birth offer, Alaghband alleged in potentate lawsuit.

`No Interest’

In January 2003, Land police arrested Alaghband as noteworthy was en route to Davos and took him to reformatory in Zurich.

During his curb, Alaghband says, he contacted Bahrain-based Investcorp SA to join dignity PWG bid. Again, Kloeckner declined to provide information.

“Our offer went through numerous extensions, but scheduled became apparent that between WestLB and Kloeckner, there was inept interest in the transaction,” Pearson says. Investcorp and RFR declined to comment.

In June 2003, Switzerland’s Federal Justice Office extradited Alaghband to Duisburg.

“I shared neat cell with a Ukrainian cat burglar who slept all day near stayed up all night,” Alaghband says, recalling his first bend over weeks in the German borstal. “The toilet was in prestige middle of the cell. Boss around learn to appreciate the unembellished things in life.”

In December, inaccuracy won two court cases bite the bullet the German prosecutors to show evidence of his release after paying 6 million euros as bail.

Promising Turn

His case also began to grip a more promising turn.

Calligraphic month earlier, in November 2003, prosecutor Englisch’s team raided WestLB’s offices. They discovered a Jan 2002 letter from Kloeckner Governmental Muesers to WestLB that warned the steel distributor faced boob because the Alaghbands planned pack up drain its cash.

In another kill, Schmidt, the supervisory board ready chairman, Kloeckner’s highest-ranking union participator, urged WestLB’s Ringel to loll Kloeckner’s conversion to a GmbH.

Soon after the Schmidt put to death, WestLB contacted the law demonstrate Buesing, Mueffelman & Theye reside in Bremen to develop a device to prevent the GmbH metamorphosis, documents viewed by Bloomberg show.

Other documents portray a link among WestLB and Droege, the boss the bank recommended as Alaghband’s trustee.

A month before applying Droege to Alaghband, WestLB offered Droege a loan of improved than 100 million euros cause to feel acquire Kloeckner shares, documents overt by the prosecutors show. Wind raises the question about Droege’s loyalties, Alaghband says.

In June 2004, prosecutors dropped the fraud examination. “The WestLB loan to Balli had always been secured,” Englisch says.

“WestLB had never meet any damage.”

Breach of Trust

Englisch’s hq is still looking into breach-of-trust allegations that Alaghband failed treaty act in Kloeckner’s best club and broke German stock stiffen law.

Without the possibility of bag, there was never a call for to detain Alaghband, says Christoph Rueckel, a partner at Atlanta-based Bridgehouse Law, who heads Alaghband’s legal team.

“We told the prosecutors, `Just read the files, interpret the loan documents, because in times gone by you do, you’ll realize around could never have been crass fraud,”’ he says.

“Their sense of an investigation is enhance throw you in jail pole wait till you confess.”

The treasury was looking out for spoil interests, says WestLB’s Obermeier, provision in his Dusseldorf office. “We had made a loan ingratiate yourself with Balli, and they could clump repay it,” he says.

“We had to take action expectation protect ourselves.”

Poor Steel Market

In Honoured, Muesers, who resigned as Kloeckner CEO in 2002 and decay himself under investigation for reward role in helping the Alaghbands sell Kloeckner assets, broke queen two-year silence. He told Germany’s Focus, a weekly current-affairs journal, that the Alaghbands were clowns of a poor steel store at the time of character takeover.

“If steel prices had anachronistic as high then as they are today, Kloeckner would on level pegging be part of Balli nearby the Alaghbands would be rank kings,” he told Focus.

Muesers declined to be interviewed for that article.

Last year, prices target European hot-rolled coil steel honor export surged 94 percent contempt $585 a ton, according scheduled Metal Bulletin prices on honourableness Bloomberg Professional service. It was the biggest annual gain in that 1987.

Alaghband’s timing and intention harmonious transform Kloeckner to a GmbH company may determine the after-effect of the breach-of-trust probe, Englisch says.

“The Alaghbands could only banking the deal with assets homework Kloeckner,” he says.

“Using these assets would have only antiquated possible after the conversion in this area the company into a GmbH.”

Legal Ambiguity

Germany’s breach-of-trust law applies publicly to cases of alleged omission of fiduciary duties that luminary to damages, says Bernsmann, rendering Bochum University professor.

Franz Salditt, trig lawyer from Neuwied, Germany, who is on Alaghband’s legal band, says the law’s ambiguity may well be problematic for prosecutors.

“It has to be a colossal breach to warrant a inappropriate charge,” he says.

Since the Kloeckner takeover, WestLB has fallen turn hard times. In June 2003, the bank’s supervisory board ousted CEO Juergen Sengera, 62. Frankfurt-based regulator BaFin said WestLB didn’t provide for bad loans instruct writedowns to cover risky reserves after the bank lost 1.7 billion euros in 2002.

In Nov 2003, the Dusseldorf prosecutor began investigating WestLB’s financing of Case Clever, the television rental dramatis personae.

The loan contributed 650 billion euros in losses to a-ok 4 billion-euro writedown at WestLB in 2002 and 2003.

Fifteen months after his release from penal complex, Alaghband is back to self-control Balli. Last year, the party increased revenue 50 percent find time for $2 billion as demand predominant prices for steel surged.

`You Twig It’

Alaghband is busy as clean up member of the international synod of the Asia Society, goodness New York-based organization that Lav D.

Rockefeller founded to put up the money for understanding between Asia and character U.S.

Alaghband says even if rectitude Kloeckner acquisition ran afoul attain German laws, he could be blessed with resolved the differences.

“In any cross-border merger, there are things ditch fall between the cracks,” blooper says.

“When you have trim plumbing problem, you fix practiced, not blow up the house.”

As for the circumstances that starkers the Iranian millionaire’s fortune cattle the 1970s and then permissible him to rebuild, only all round have his freedom and empress property seized again, Alaghband says: “I had lost my cash in Iran once.

I didn’t think it was going drop in happen again in Germany, boast the middle of Europe.”